Roger on Running: Season of Storm and Stress

The darker side of running's success

The marathon season right after the Olympics always packs surprises – new records, new names, new pecking order. But no one imagined the Fall 2012 season would be dominated by catastrophe, cancelation, anger and acrimony. Running has been battered by storm and public rejection, and could be heading for worse, with other problems that can't be blamed on Hurricane Sandy – race fixing and drugs, to put it bluntly. Exactly the same issues that wrecked the once-thriving sport of professional running (“pedestrianism”) 150 years ago. A Lance Armstrong meltdown is not beyond possibility. This is not the moment to have fun scoring podium places between Kenya and Ethiopia.

My concern here is the big picture, not just the ING New York City Marathon furore. I was stuck in Los Angeles for most of those three fraught days between Mayor Bloomberg's announcement that the race would go on, and the Friday evening counter-announcement that it was canceled (minutes after I arrived in the race media center). It's worth saying that on the evidence of my hotel TV, and as much on-line coverage as I could access, the first decision didn't seem an irresponsible one. The stories and images we got those days were all of Lower Manhattan and coastal New Jersey. The media obsessed over Governor Chris Christie schmoozing with President Obama among the wreckage of Seaside Park, which I looked up and found is on a precariously exposed spit 40 miles from the marathon course. No coverage from Staten Island, nothing from Brooklyn, and apart from the Queen's fire, nothing from anywhere on or near the course. Unless you were on the spot, the scale of the disaster within the city boroughs was not apparent until late in the week. A friend who has brothers on Staten Island could not contact them and even he was not aware of the problems there for five days.

Yes, it would have been less troublesome and less expensive for everyone (including me) if the race had been canceled earlier. But it was not malpractice for New York Road Runners and the mayor to wait until they were sure it was unsustainable. You don't make that kind of decision before the evidence is in.

Some context: There have been large-scale last-minute cancelations before – the 1995 Osaka Women's Marathon after an earthquake, the 2011 Nagoya Women's Marathon after the March tsunami, the International Track Meet in Christchurch, New Zealand, after the February 2011 earthquake (see Roger on Running, February 2011, The Silver Lining of the Christchurch Quake) and many races around America, including the Avon Women's US Championship, the weekend after the terrorist attacks of Tuesday September 11, 2001. Those all impacted on invited elite athletes, sponsors, media, charities, and city authorities, as well as causing major local inconvenience and economic loss.

Yet the animosity of the controversy this month had no precedent. When humans are getting hammered, we instinctively look for someone to blame, but this time it was suddenly running, of all unlikely things, that was castigated in the social media and subjected to indignant front-page wrath in the tabloids. The New York Post continued to beat up the story – partly because self-righteously blaming someone sells papers, partly I suspect to distract attention from the inadequacy of their own reporting that first week from Staten Island. Indignation substitutes for journalism. But why us? Why did the original decision to go ahead with the marathon provoke such anger and acrimony?

When I was first running marathons no one noticed or cared. But now, almost too fast for anyone to comprehend the full implications, running has become big, prominent, and powerful. Mayor Bloomberg's original statement argued for the race to go ahead entirely in economic terms.

“We have to have an economy. There are an awful lot of small businesses that depend on these people [the runners],” he said.

Note “depend.” In other words, even mega-rich New York City can't do without us. In the midst of a disaster, that $350 million reality seemed, for three days, to override sentiment.

“For those who were lost, you've got to believe they would want us to have an economy, and have a city go on for those they have left behind,” Bloomberg said.

So suddenly running has responsibilities, way beyond putting on efficient, runner-friendly races. Now we must take responsibility for our new place in the world, our new identity as an industry, our new role of social-cultural leadership, and those who depend on us economically. That hurricane blew running bang up against the real world. Up to the first weekend in November, the growth in running seemed to be all fun, all positive, a kind of fantasy candy-mountain. We like to see ourselves as inclusive and welcoming, we stretch every race to bursting point to let in more people, we love to see the restaurant signs that say “Runners welcome” and the vast crowds that cheer us along their streets, we parade for them as heroes or princesses, every runner a winner, we congratulate ourselves on taking over the city on race day, convinced that our appropriation is benign, we take pride in belonging to a community that is open and supportive, we devote ourselves to running for good causes and we feel good about it. Running is powerful but uses its power wholly for good – so we have believed, with childlike innocence.

This month we have had to confront the darker side of success. The sport was faced with a decision that impacted on the whole community, in a time of crisis. We discovered that behind the cheering crowds there lurk those who feel resentment and even contempt. We were reminded that we do not, in fact, recruit from the whole of society, but mainly from a privileged upper-middle-class segment. We were forced to admit that we're a Manhattan sport, not a Staten Island one. We appealed to our charity resumee, reminding critics of the huge contribution made to New York's underprivileged by the “Run for Kids” program, rebranding the 2012 marathon as a fund-raiser, offering a million dollars donation to hurricane relief, and our volunteer resources and equipment for relief work.

It was sincerely meant but it didn't help. We still came out looking self-absorbed and obtuse, an attention-seeking procession of expensive shoes and pace-measuring watches through neighborhoods where homes were still awash with seawater. The sport's insiders reeled. People who have devoted their careers to creating and putting out good news about running are ravaged now by two weeks of real-world dispute and negativity.

This has been the moment, you could say, when running had to put away childish things, when the running boom finally had to grow up. From now on, we have to take account of the hard-nosed, fickle world of profit, politics, and public opinion. The test will be how we learn from it. One lesson is that when you get successful, not every one will like you. Another is that we have taken for granted our right to be applauded (look at every race and charity-team ad) and neglected the people who provide the applause. (See Roger on Running, December 2011, A New Year's Resolution: A Proposal to Support our Spectators.)

Two other events of this fall season demanded similar strategic reappraisal. In the BMW Berlin Marathon on September 30, Geoffrey Mutai won in 2:04:15, the fastest of the season and fourth fastest in history (discounting Boston 2011), but the consuming interest was on the runner one second behind him, the 2:04:16 debut of Mutai's Kenyan training partner Dennis Kimetto. He seemed (reported Pat Butcher on the spot) “content to follow his colleague home.” Kimetto's acceptance of the supporting role, and his obliging or obedient disinclination to challenge for the win may (every observer present thought) have been connected to Mutai's $500,000 payday for the 2011-12 World Marathon Majors title, which 25 points for the Berlin win would confirm.

That may be speculation, but it's something the sport has to examine carefully. Deferring to your training partner and mentor may be OK. Throwing a race because of a financial agreement is not OK.

Bad news Number 3 was the drugs disqualification of Russia's Inga Abitova. Based on abnormalities in her “biological passport,” the ban deprives her of several valuable placings, including second at Virgin London and fourth at ING New York in 2010. This follows revelations (well, OK, we'll call them accusations for the time being) by a German journalist, of extensive doping among European-managed athletes in Kenya, and a few weeks earlier two significant pre-Games eliminations from Russia's women's Olympic marathon team.

The positive is that the biological passport program is showing and using its teeth. The suspicions that have simmered around the marathon world about a number of Russian women and Kenyan men have been at least partly vindicated. But at a time when professional road cycling is being whirled to the brink of destruction by Hurricane Lance, it's not a happy thought that professional road running could get sucked into the same fatal vortex.

Not much mist and mellowness about this autumn. But as the old black joke goes, “So apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, what did you think of the play?”

Well, Mutai and Kimetto did run very fast at Berlin. Kimetto looks like the next great talent. Even better, for those of us who prefer races rather than staged record attempts, Bank of America Chicago gave us two absolute classics. Tsegaye Kebede confirmed that he is one of the great marathoners of this era in a cunning and courageous win over Feyisa Lelisa and Tiluhun Regassa (all Ethiopia). Kebede's 2:04:38 gave him the satisfaction of running two minutes faster than the late Sammy Wanjiru, when he dropped Kebede with that astonishing late surge in Chicago in 2010. And since I'm asking for tough honesty on serious issues, let me add that many of us felt Wanjiru's surge that day and personal deterioration afterwards could have been symptomatic of EPO use.

Chicago's women's race was an edge-of-the-seat drama, as Atsede Baysa (Ethiopia) edged Rita Jeptoo (Kenya) by one second in 2:22:03.

Also in Chicago, Dathan Ritzenhein proved that Americans can run fast marathons, with a big PR 2:07:47, making him US third all-time behind Khalid Khannouchi and Ryan Hall. Unfortunately, he also showed how tough it is these days to get on the podium, by placing only ninth, behind (no surprise) four each from Ethiopia and Kenya. Renee Metivier Baillie also lifted American spirits with 2:27:17 in fifth.

Other results of note in this quick look back over the fall season: fast times from Dickson Chumba (Kenya) 2:05:46 at Eindhoven, and Wilson Chebet (Kenya) 2:05:41 at Amsterdam; a win for world-record holder Patrick Makau at Frankfurt, in a (these days) modest 2:06:08; and Zersenay Tadese (Eritrea), all praise to him, won the world half-marathon championship for the fifth time, in 1:00:19.

The women confirmed what I said about the post-Olympic season showcasing new names. Did you ever hear before of Aberu Kebede (Ethiopia) who won Berlin in 2:20:30, the fastest women's time of the season? Or Meselech Melkama (Ethiopia), who won Frankfurt in her debut in 2:21:05? Or Georgina Rono (Kenya) who followed her in 2:21:42? Or Meseret Hailu (Ethiopia) who won Amsterdam in 2:21:09? Or Eunice Kirwa (Kenya), second there in 2:21:41? That's enough new names to make a whole new generation. It was very windy in Amsterdam, or Hailu, a training friend of Olympic champion Tiki Gelana at Getaneh Tessema's camp, might have gone even faster.

Since this column permits me to express personal views, I will end with three fall performances that in a shamelessly subjective way mean a lot to me. One, since I'm getting up there, was Ed Whitlock's age-defying 3:30:28 at age 81 (yes, 81, good grief!) in Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront.

Two, also at Scotiabank, an unknown New Zealander living in Ottawa, Mary Davies, upset the invited East Africans by winning in 2:28:56. Yes! It can be done (especially by a kiwi).

Three, since she is one of the most gracious and substantial women in running, what a delight it was to see Jelena Prokopcuka (Latvia) back in action and pushing the pace in the middle miles of Britain's Great North Run half-marathon. To remind, she won New York in 2005 and 2006, was third in 2007, and had two seconds and two fourths at Boston, 2004-08. Since then, she suffered serious pregnancy/miscarriage problems, followed by the successful birth last year of a son, who starred at the Austrian Women's Run in Vienna in June. At the Great North Run, new-mom Prokopcuka stirred up Tirunesh Dibaba, Edna Kiplagat and Tiki Gelana, probably the classiest top three of any race this fall. Prokopcuka, now 36, finished fourth, in 1:08:09. Which suggests she is back.

Storm and stress, cancelation, anger, accusation, class-resentment, money, drugs – it has not been an easy season. Even the Bill Rodgers Running Center in Boston closed its doors, which feels like the White House got blown over. It's still a positive sport, and the likes of Whitlock, Davies, and Prokopcuka, and Tadese, Kebede, Ritz, Metivier Baillie, and that upsurge of new 2:20-2:21 women, bring more vitality and accomplishment than any written retrospect can capture. Yet running has been challenged to mature, and come to terms with the real world. We will be wise to ponder the lessons as well as the legends of this fall.